by F. D. Lee
“Right, what’s the matter?”
Ana could see there was more to Sindy’s request to return home than the claim that her mother and stepfather missed her. She doubted very much her mother had even noticed she’d gone, and as for Sindy’s father… Well, he was a kind enough sort of man, but it was clear he regretted the marriage. Either that or there was a much greater need for a travelling cobbler than Ana had ever imagined.
“Oh, oh, oh,” Sindy cried, her normally lovely face screwed up with anxiety. She looked around her at all the people milling about the encampment. “Please, Ana,” she whispered, “he came to our house. He was in our living room!”
Ana paused. She had known Sindy for a few years now, and although she couldn’t for the life of her understand why her stepsister didn’t stand up for herself more, she had learned not to completely disregard everything she said.
“He?” she asked, a shadow of realisation darkening her expression. “Let me guess: Prince Charming?”
Sindy nodded. Ana, scowling furiously, grabbed Sindy’s arm and shoved her into a nearby tent. “We’d better finish this inside.”
Inside it was warm and cosy. A small fire burned in the centre of the tent, the air tasted of sap and smelled of apples. Ana flopped down onto the rug-strewn floor, as graceful as a sack of potatoes, and waved for Sindy to do the same – which she did, and yet somehow Sindy managed to perform the exact same action with about half the density.
Ana was not a big girl; in fact, she was quite far over the slim horizon and entering the plains of skinniness, but she managed to carry herself in such a way that she gave the impression of being much larger than she was. Sindy, although in reality much plumper than Ana, looked like a warm breeze might unsettle her delicate balance.
Ana and Sindy, Sindy and Ana.
For every golden hair that fell in shimmering waves of liquid honey over Sindy’s creamy white shoulders, Ana had lank, muddy brown strands that hung in tresses which always seemed to have been dried in a wind turbine. Sindy saw the world through eyes of the brightest blue, so wide and serene that when she blinked one felt for a moment that the oceans had suddenly dried. Ana observed it through a layer of suspicion that she desperately wanted life to counter, all hidden behind eyes that were the sludgy green of wet bark. Sindy was pale, Ana was pasty. Sindy was naïve and simple and kind. Ana was an idealist, a fighter and a hardened cynic.
But this did not mean that they hated each other.
So when her stepsister showed up, waving her arms around as she tried to encapsulate the full horror of opening a front door and finding the King on the other side of it, the King who, by the way, had only come to see a sister who wasn’t even there, and who, coincidently, was causing him no end of grief, so that the sister who was there had to try and deal with him. And also he seemed to be more annoyed than he should have been that the first sister, that is the missing sister, wasn’t there, and anyway he was inviting said missing sister to his Ball, which was to raise money for the deforestation that sister number one was fighting against, and he would very much like the absentee sister to come, but only if she would stop, please, squatting in his wood and specifically stopping him from accessing his water supply; Ana decided to listen.
Ana digest this information. From the rather pained expression on her face, it didn’t seem to be going down well.
“He wants me to go to his Ball?” Ana asked, an entire orchestra of disbelief in her voice, including the triangle.
“Yes,” Sindy said. There wasn’t really much else she could say.
“To his Ball?”
Sindy stuck with what she knew. “Yes.”
“To his Ball?”
Sindy could only nod.
“Of all the nerve! I mean, seriously? Can you just...? Really? Does he really think I’m that shallow? That we’re that shallow? I knew he was a megalomaniac with about the same moral compass as a, a, a, wheel of cheese, but I can’t believe he would try to…! Right, well, you know what he can do with his bloody Ball? He can just damn well stick it where the sun doesn’t shine!”
“Is that somewhere in the north?”
Ana deflated. “No… I just mean… I mean he can forget it. That’s all. There’s no way either of us are going.”
“I don’t think he invited me,” Sindy said, before adding gently, “and I don’t think that will stop him from hosting the Ball. He said he wanted to raise money. Sorry.”
Ana stood up and stomped around her tent.
Money. She hated money. It seemed to be the one thing in the whole world that was guaranteed to turn decent people into conniving, dishonest, selfish, lying cheats. But if the King could get his hands on some then he could find his water elsewhere, and then, once the giant steam engines were running, her small group of protesters would be about as effective as a glass shoe.
If only he would see that by cutting down the woods and expanding the city he was drawing attention to their little home. The bigger Llanotterly became the more reason Cerne Bralksteld had to march on them. Ana, and indeed all the members of the résistance, were deeply afraid of Cerne Bralksteld.
They too had heard the whispers about forced evictions and villages burned to the ground; about the slave pits, buried deep in the stone walls of the city. The place where those who had fought and lost toiled in the manufactories, their skin burnt to a crisp from the boiling steam, their bodies held together by the bitter hope of death.
Ana had thought that the King’s proclamation about selling the wood was just him showboating, trying to show the citizens of Llanotterly and their neighbours that he was the one in charge. Then, when it seemed he intended to continue in his madness, she thought that by moving out here and surrounding the widest part of the river, he might back down. But he hadn’t.
This meant that she was still here, in an overcrowded camp in the heart of the forest, blocking the King’s access to the only major water supply for miles.
It was a plan that, for all its functional simplicity, did not suffer from an abundance of longevity. During the day it was quite jolly, but the fact was that there was only so long that people could survive this close to nature. The whole drive of civilisation was, after all, to move human beings as far away from the natural world as bricks, mortar, clean water, cooked food and soft beds could manage.
The truth was that Ana wasn’t sure exactly what to do about the fact the King was trying to raise money in order to work around her protest, but she would think on it and wait for guidance.
As it turned out, she wouldn’t have to wait long.
Chapter Seventeen
There was a polite knock at the door.
“C’min, c’min,” shouted John.
Seven entered, bowing fluidly.
“No need to stand on ceremony, old bean, s’just thee and me, after all.”
“As you say, my Lord.”
The current King of Llanotterly was sitting on his bed, in a room with pastel papered walls on which paintings of his forebears stared down at him in silent recrimination. There was a thickly woven carpet on the floor, glazed windows and a large mirrored wardrobe along the back wall.
Seven stepped a little to the left, out of the reflection.
A small bronze and silver clock tick-tocked by the King’s bed. John wound it every day, even though the old mechanisms were now well beyond usefulness.
It had been bought abroad by John’s father, Edward, when Llanotterly still had enough money to pay for a foreign education in the universities in Ota’ari, the First Kingdom. Here the traditional lessons in arithmetic, astrology and ancient languages (the infamous three-As) were taught along with more modern subjects like engineering, mathematics and the philosophy of elementis.
“Ah, S. Sit y’self down, fella,” John said, pushing aside one of the piles of books littering his bed. “Got some matters to chew over.”
“My Lord?”
John waited to see if he would take the invited seat, but as usual the Adviser
preferred to stand. John gave up waiting.
“Been reading up on the steam engines. Know anything about ’em, S?”
“The technology was discovered in Ota’ari. Clockwork was the harbinger, but it is now the steam engines that power the worlds of agriculture, shipping and industry.”
“Quite right, quite right,” John said, smiling at his student. “The very first experiments were in Imi p’Antuf, quite a small place once by all accounts. But do you know when all this malarkey went on?”
Seven didn’t answer.
“Seventy years ago, old bean. Seventy years ago. Surprised me too, oh yes. Could’ve knocked me down with a feather and that’s the truth of it. So, the question I asked myself was what, S.?”
“I would not presume to guess, your Majesty.”
John leaned forward, causing the remaining piles of books to topple over, landing unnoticed on the thick carpet. The King lowered his voice, as if his bed chamber were a likely den of intrigue.
“C’mon, S., s’not difficult. You know what’s what.”
For some reason, the Adviser’s eyes wandered to the wardrobe.
“What’s been the crack for the last seventy years?” John prompted.
“Pardon, my Lord?”
“Ehinenden, S.!”
Seven shook his head. “Apologies, Sire. I do not follow.”
“Ehinenden, that’s what, man!”
John watched as the Adviser frowned, trying to catch his gist. He wasn’t disappointed.
“Ahh. Your Majesty refers to Cerne Bralksteld and the manufactories.”
John beamed. “Indeedy. Thanks to the Baron it turns out Ehinenden’s not really the Third Kingdom, more like The Kingdom. Ota’ari can’t trade because of those paranoid Penqis, Voriias is too busy working over its own people and propping up Skjnelia. And Cairranbia’s pretty much ruined now, thanks to Cerne Bralksteld taking all those people as slaves.” John shook his head. “Hate the thought of slavery, S., though I’d be a damnable liar if I denied the benefit of it – look what the Baron’s achieved off the back of it. Hellishly tricky business. My aunt used to say that slaves didn’t know any better anyway, y’know, that they couldn’t really catch on to the fact of what was happening to them. Be nice if she were right, eh, S.?”
John wasn’t sure why, but he wanted the other man to confirm what his aunt had told him, even though he knew it was tosh. He could feel the need for reassurance inside him, like one of them pig’s bladders the kiddies use to play sports with – all blown up in his chest, getting bigger and bigger.
Odd really, but there it was. There was just something about S. that comforted. John always had the feeling the Adviser knew just what it was he wanted.
He waited for Seven to answer.
Come to think of it, he was taking his time about it. Unusual for him to not be quick off the mark. In fact, he looked dashed uncomfortable, like he was trying not to fart in front of a woman.
“You alright there?”
Seven shifted his weight, reaching up to touch the snake around his neck. “Sire, you want me to tell you something we both know is untrue, and I find I cannot. I suspect they knew very well what turn their lives had taken, just as I am sure the current slaves in Cerne Bralksteld are aware of their fates.”
The balloon in his chest deflated, but John nodded anyway. He knew he’d been chasing smoke.
“Well, best we try n’ avoid any of that nonsense here,” John said. “Baron’s a nasty fella, and he wants more tax than we can pay. Caer Marllyn’s a small county. It’s never been much more’n a scrabble of sticks. We’re farmers, builders, bakers. The whole of Ehinenden ain’t much more’n that, t’be honest.”
“And yet with the continuing rise of The Imperial City of Cerne Bralksteld the fortunes of the whole of Ehinenden – Caer Marllyn, Marlais and Sausendorf – are changing, Sire, regardless of the region’s historical preferences.”
“Quite so, quite so. Seems like the world’s on the cot,” John sighed, frowning into the distance.
The clock continued to beat out its own paroxysmal rhythm, a series of mis-steps and dropped beats that would surely drive anyone crazy if they were to concentrate on it.
John listened to the beat, which was not unlike his own Kingship: all wrong. He hadn’t been sent to the right schools or universities. There hadn’t been the cash. And his father should have lasted a good few years longer – now there was a lesson against fifty years of rich eating. So here he was, stuck with a near bankrupt Kingdom with an immensely powerful, money-grabbing madman for a neighbour.
It really was a stinker.
“Got a lot on our plates, ain’t we?” John said.
“…We… have, yes. Do not forget though we have also much to our advantage. The docks in Sinne are yours, as is Llanotterly itself. And the forests are our most significant asset. They are an enviable resource.”
“If we could bloody well get at ’em. Which, as it happens, brings me to m’point. We’ve still got to meet this wretched Ana woman.”
“Sire?”
John stood up and walked over to his Adviser, putting his arm around his shoulder. “Of course, I say ‘we’...”
He led the Adviser to his mirror. It was harder going than he’d anticipated.“C’mon man, no need to be shy. S’not going to bite. There we go. See? You’re a handsome devil without that damn hood on.”
“John?” A new note had entered the orchestra of Seven’s accent.
“And you’ve got a way with words, damn right. More’n once you’ve folded me like farthingale. So, I was thinking, y’see, that you could go down to that there camp on your tod, sort of thing, and speak to this Ana on my behalf. Do a bit of ambassadoring.”
“Sire, I am not-”
John patted him on the shoulder. “Course you are. I’ve got every faith in you, old soak. I couldn’t wish for a better man.”
If he hadn’t had his hand on Seven’s shoulder, John would have probably missed it, and even so, when he thought about it later, he really couldn’t put his finger on what happened. He’d been speaking to S., trying to give the lad a bit of a pep talk, encourage him and so on, plus get this bloody Ana gel wrapped up, when he’d seemed to have a funny turn.
“You alright?” John asked. “You seem a little tense.”
Seven gently ducked out of the King’s arm and stepped away from the mirror. “I am quite well. If you have no more need of me…?”
“Nope, on your way,” John said, feeling guilty for some reason. He studied Seven as he turned to leave, the Adviser’s hand already reaching for the silk hood at his waist. John’s eyes started to sting, and his rubbed them quickly with the heels of his hands.
“You know, S.,” he called out, his vision blurry, “when you first rolled up here I thought you were a rum fella, I don’t mind saying so. But you’ve got a good head and you don’t mince your words. Been a delight having someone like you to take an interest in Llanotterly’s wellbeing. Good show, old sport.”
“Sire,” Seven said, turning back into the room and bowing low before stepping out.
Seven stormed into his suite, slamming the large double doors closed. He paused for a moment, leaning back against the wood. His chest rose and fell rapidly, and then began to calm.
He pulled himself off the door, and padded towards his bed, his movements set to the sound of his jewellery. He landed heavily on the thick mattress.
Seven pulled off his silk hood and gloves, slowly flexing his fingers against the memory of the material. He folded the items up carefully and then tucked them, close at hand, into the waistband of his trousers.
To the eye of the invisible observer it was in some sense a very minor change that overcame him when he entered the safety of his room, removed his protective clothing and allowed himself to relax. In feature he was as he had always been: his eyes retained the same almond shape, and his jaw continued to be wide and square. His hair remained as tightly curled as a corkscrew and his shoulders broad, taperin
g down to narrow hips and a flat, strong stomach.
And yet if anyone had happened upon him now, in his natural state and too angry and exhausted to hide himself, all hell would have broken loose, and it would have taken him a lot more than a bit of magic to set it right again.
He wondered that he ever thought he could manage such a task, surrounded by so many of them, bleating on and on about what they wanted.
And yet, was he so very different?
Was he not here now, entrenched to the point where the prospect of leaving – though of course possible, and it would hardly be the first time – felt very dissatisfactory?
Seven rubbed his temples in a way that suggested he was in pain, and indeed his forehead was caught in a frown which could have been discomfort.
It was John’s fault, Seven told himself. With his good intentions and lack of confidence. Could he not see he was quite the most superior monarch this wretched place had seen in generations? Here was a human, such a weak thing, so mired in need and selfishness and fear, trying despite all of this to keep his people from harm.
Seven’s fingers crept again to the snake around his neck, looking for reassurance. Could he have resisted? What would have happened? With a stab of annoyance Seven realised he could have refused, if he’d wanted to.
“Va,” Seven swore in the old language, shaking his head.
He was here now, was he not, and, for all that fate seemed determined to set obstacles in his way, every day he was getting closer to his objective. Nothing would stop him now, not John’s earnest attempts at friendship, nor Ana’s well-meant rebellion, nor the General Administration and its latest shill. There was no need for concern. Was he not just in his actions? Did he not strive for a greater good? He would be victorious.
He stood and walked over to the large wooden desk in the corner of his chamber. The desk was Ehinen in origin, from the small Athenine forest in Marlais and thus extremely rare. The wood was thick and heavy, varnished to such a deep brown it was almost black. Carved woodland animals climbed up the legs and ran around the edges of the table top, as if they had nothing better to do than look for a secret compartment or sneak peeks at the royal correspondence that littered its surface.
